TELESCOPES

14

EYEPIECES - MAGNIFICATIONS, FIELD OF VIEW, EYE RELIEF

There so many different eyepieces available for telescopes. Each one has something different
in it's characteristics even if it just a change in
magnification. First of all there are the sizes.
These are the diameters of the eyepieces. They are 1" (25.4mm), 1.25" (31.7mm) or 2"
(50.8mm). The most popular are the
1.25"'s. The 1" eyepieces generally come with smaller
telescopes as standard and can be updated to the larger 1.25" size when you have worked
out which ones would
suit what you like to look at in the sky. It works well this way as the
standard 1" eyepieces make the telescope affordable and are enough to get you started.
Updating your eyepieces is the most significant way to improve your telescopes performance.
2" eyepieces are not widely used in Australia as of yet mainly
because of their huge price
tags and most telescopes aren't designed to accept them. An adapter may be purchased,
but the 2" eyepiece must still suit the
telescopes optics.

A minimum of three eyepieces is needed to compliment a telescope. This is usually made
up from:

1) a good quality, fairly high magnification eyepiece for the planets and Moon. It's the high
magnifications that will see the intricate details, so it
may as well be a good one.

2) a low magnification eyepiece which has a wide field. These are great to fit in the extra
wide objects like nebula and star fields. Since this type of
eyepiece is not used for studying
close up detail, it doesn't have to be as expensive as the high magnification eyepiece. These
eyepieces are also excellent for
beginners as they show a large area of the sky to search
for the objects your trying to find.

Barlows come in 1.5x, 2x, 3x, 4x, and 5x. If you have a a focal ratio telescope of F/6, using
a 2x Barlow will make it a F/12 (2x6). Barlows are especially
useful for getting high magnifications
out of short focal ratio telescopes as eyepieces can only be made so short in focal length
(4mm is

and it's a 254mm diameter mirror, using a 6mm eyepieces will only give you 190x magnification
(1140/6 = 190) and you will have to put your eye so close to
the eyepiece (eye relief) it will
be uncomfortable. The Barlow will make it comfortable for your eye to view and double
the magnification to 380x.